


Epigoni

by Escalus



Series: Titanomachy [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Espionage, Friendship, Gen, Hydra (Marvel), Moral Dilemmas, Nogitsune Stiles Stilinski, Past Allison Argent/Scott McCall, Resurrection, True Alpha Scott McCall (Teen Wolf)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:34:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28039269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Escalus/pseuds/Escalus
Summary: Ten months after the events ofDisoscuriand the Battle of Washington D.C., Stiles and Scott have come to terms with what happened to both of them.  As the new leader of Hydra's Department of Occult Armaments, Stiles, now calling himself Fox, must deal with the threat of the Avenger's War Against Hydra,  the internal politics of the DOA, other enemies, and the nagging feeling that he's going in the wrong direction.  On the other hand, Scott is trying to go to school, trying to lead a pack, trying to be a good friend and son, while ignoring the emotional wound of being unable to save Stiles.Events will soon move them bring them back into each other's worlds.
Relationships: Alan Deaton & Scott McCall, Allison Argent/Isaac Lahey, Isaac Lahey & Scott McCall, Scott McCall & Stiles Stilinski, Steve Rogers & Tony Stark
Series: Titanomachy [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2053893
Comments: 33
Kudos: 55





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> While it is not absolutely necessary to read the first installment, I would recommend it. I'll try to make it as easy to follow as possible. The reader should know that Hydra kidnapped Stiles while he was in Eichen House and used the Mind Stone to merge Stiles and the Nogistune together, creating a Void Kitsune. Scott and Stiles were drawn into the events of _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_ and Scott failed to convince Stiles to return to Beacon Hills.
> 
> This work is designed to be an homage and a celebration of these two properties. I do not own the characters.

###### October 25, 2014. Samana Cay Facility

At 7:05 a.m. precisely, the song ‘Michi’ by Keiko Abe began to play in his darkened quarters.

When he had been just a teenage boy, mornings had been difficult for him. Stiles had never managed to get to sleep at a regular time, and his sleep, once he managed to go to bed, had achieved random results. Some nights he was out like a light when his head touched a pillow, but other nights he would lay awake for hours staring at an unseen ceiling. Sometimes, his thoughts would still be burning like dry wood from the activities of the past day, and he would have to wait until the flames died down. Other times, dark memories would sit on his chest like a night-hag stealing his breath. 

That didn’t happen anymore. The person he was now could regulate his own mind and body much better than a gangling sixteen-year-old could ever dream of doing, and he had enough emotional distance from the boy’s past as to be able to wrangle certain feelings back to where they belonged. 

So when Fox woke up, especially when he had had a good night’s rest, he was no longer half-dead to the world. His eyes opened like a switchblade, his mind was ready to start the day. It was one of many improvements to his life which he appreciated.

“Open blinds.” 

Hydra’s technology was often more advanced than what was commercially available, but it wasn’t always necessarily groundbreaking. He had found that one of the organization’s strengths was taking normal technology and pushing it just far enough to reach the next level. The room itself responded to Fox’s voice (and his voice alone) allowing him to control temperature, lighting, security, and communications. The overall effect was impressive, even if it was, in reality, simply an upgraded Alexa. Outside, the dawn light from above the ocean barely filtered down to this level, giving the dark water a slight glow. In response to the opening, a Nassau grouper approached the window to investigate. 

Fox eyed the fish until it moved away. Then he stretched and headed into the bathroom to get cleaned up. “Give me my schedule.”

The artificial female voice recited the day’s activities. “You have a staff meeting at 9:00 a.m. You have an evaluation of the newest Project Vargulf candidates at 1:30 p.m. You have a briefing on the PRIDE at 4:00 p.m.”

Fox turned in surprise, with his toothbrush hanging out of his mouth. “The what?” He took it out so he could be heard by the computer more clearly. “Remind me what the Pride is and why I asked for a briefing on it.”

“The PRIDE is a charity organization based in Los Angeles. Known agent of the Master of the Mystic Arts Tina Minoru serves on its board of directors.” 

He remembered now, and nodded to acknowledge the information. The fact that he was gesturing to something that wasn’t a real person out of long-term habit didn’t faze him. Ayla had told him that it was a harmless ingrained social reflex, to acknowledge information given to you by a voice, no matter how it was produced. People reacted to the approximation of humanity, even if the source wasn’t remotely human.

Like him. 

The PRIDE bore looking into, simply for the possibility that it had a sorcerous connection. Ever since Fox had taken over as the head of the Department of Occult Armaments, he had tried to expand his branch of Hydra’s knowledge of any organization with a supernatural connection. His deceased predecessor had been completely uninterested in keeping tabs on potential rivals. It was one of the reasons Belial had failed so miserably and had been so easy to replace.

Coming out of the bathroom, he began his morning workout. While he had benefited immensely from the training that he had received from Brock Rumlow at the Triskelion, he hadn’t kept it up. It didn’t satisfy either side of his personality. The nogitsune had never cared much about the physical condition of its hosts, as it could use its powers to compensate. Stiles had never gotten into the no-pain-no-gain weight-room mentality of his fellow athletes. Instead, Fox had turned to yoga, something that appealed to both his natures and with which he was more than familiar, for his physical conditioning.

It also allowed him to order his thoughts as he went through his daily routine, something he found made things go much smoother as he grew accustomed to his new state. The appetite of the nogitsune had to be harnessed, not suppressed, and that took practice and resolve. The flash-fire emotions of the young man who had almost been consumed by everything he had gone through had to be brought to heel. The process couldn’t be done in a single event no matter how cathartic. Mental hygiene had become as important as keeping his body in good physical condition.

After a shower and a quick breakfast of natto and rice, he headed toward the conference room next to the control center. On the way, he checked in to make sure that there was nothing that required his immediate attention. 

He had to keep on his toes. The Avengers were taking out a Hydra complex on the average of once a month, but Von Strucker was being quite clever. The other Hydra leader had planted information in each facility that would lead the superheroes to another facility; this allowed Von Strucker to successfully steer Stark and the others away from most important Hydra facilities. While Von Strucker would ultimately send the Avengers against the DOA’s facilities, as much as he swore he wouldn’t, all his analysis indicated that they may have months before that happened.

Fox had plans for all vital personnel and material to be elsewhere when the inevitable occurred, and his new facilities were places about which the other leaders of Hydra knew nothing. 

The alert board was clear, but he hesitated none-the-less. He had placed an agent in Beacon Hills, and he thought about asking for a report from them, but he didn’t. He wasn’t someone who constantly worried about the people there; he was someone else now. He had to be. He went to his staff meeting.

Dr. Ranefer, Theo Raeken, and the druid Kyllian Boddicker were waiting for him in the conference room as they should be. The only irritation was that Boddicker had brought his oak staff with him, and that made Stiles frown. Keeping the potent weapon with him meant that the druid was still suspicious of the rest of them. While caution was a useful trait to have in this business, Stiles needed Kyllian to be less obvious about it. 

Ayla and Theo greeted him casually, the same as any other day and any other staff meeting. He had their trust, and he trusted them, as much as a Hydra scientist, a chimera, and a void kitsune could fully trust each other. What was more important to Stiles was that he had managed to earn their loyalty. It was a strange and powerful feeling. The nogitsune had never sought out loyalty or valued it; its flies could command obedience when it needed it. Stiles had only ever received it from Scott, and it was empowering to get it from other sources.

It hadn’t cost him much. He had earned Dr. Ranefer’s by purposefully freeing her from duties she found uninteresting and distracting — such as dealing with inter-branch politics — and allowing her to pursue her own research as long as it benefited the DOA’s ends. He had increased it exponentially by recruiting the Dread Doctor’s unorthodox treatments to correct her infestation problems. 

On the other hand, he had received Theo’s loyalty — such as it was — by freeing him from having to work with his creators. The Doctors hadn’t put up much of a fight when it came to that because Stiles had provided them with resources they could use instead of the First Chimera. Theo still didn’t want to be connected to Hydra, but it was better than being anywhere else, and Stiles hadn’t punished him too badly when he had run away earlier that year.

“Let’s get this party started. Get our good doctor on the line.”

Ayla leaned forward and made contact. The Surgeon appeared on the monitor, broadcast from the base in New Mexico. When Stiles had recruited the Doctors he had given them the old SHIELD base where Thor’s hammer had fell to earth in addition to providing support on their secret experiment. In return, he had cajoled the lead mad scientist into attending staff meetings remotely. The Surgeon never appreciated their usefulness.

This morning seemed to be no exception, though no one could really tell what was going on behind the mask.

“Good morning. Let’s get started.” He tapped his tablet to life. “Dr. Ranefer, summarize the status of our current projects.”

Ayla looked up. “Project Vargulf has four subjects in Stage Three and five subjects in Stage Two.”

Project Vargulf was the Department of Occult Armaments’ program to develop omega werewolves into supernatural shock troops. Stiles had taken the lessons he had learned from Deucalion’s manipulation of Boyd and Cora and applied them to unsuspecting omegas attracted to the safety and power that Hydra could provide. Stage Three meant that the subjects had gone completely feral and would only be useful in the same way a grenade was useful — pull the pin and toss it at your enemies. Stage Two meant that the omegas were violently unstable, yet they could still be pointed at the correct targets. Stage One was the initial training phase but they presently had no subjects in it, which was why he was reviewing candidates this afternoon.

“Keep me updated. We might need the Stage Three subjects soon. Anything else?”

“Dr. Whitehall has requested we search our memory banks for historical references to a peculiar obelisk. SHIELD took it from him during WWII and he is quite focused on getting it back.” 

“Well, isn’t that darling? Dr. Whitehall does like to be pushy, and we certainly have better things to do than investigate his alien artifact, but hell, in the spirit of cooperation or what-the-fuck-ever, have someone incompetent look into it.” Stiles had met Dr. Whitehall once and had been so forcibly reminded of Adrian Harris that he had to restrain himself from breaking the man’s neck right there and then. “Enough about his alien interests, what about _our_ alien interests?”

“The cataloging of Asgardian arcane technology and related events is ongoing. We have the beginnings of a database, but it will take time before it’s complete.”

“All good tricks take preparation. Keep me updated. Theo? Your intelligence report.”

Theo leafed through his own tablet. He had tasked the chimera into gathering and collating all the information from contacts and other Hydra branches. “The Avengers have been seen in Estonia by our agents. Tony Stark was spotted going to a club in Parnű, and Hydra operatives in the Estonian military have at noted at least two different Quinjet landings at Amari Air Base in the north of the country. As predicted by Von Strucker, their next target is most likely Nootamäa.”

“At least they’re going to be miserable. The Baltic is nasty this time of year. Any indication that our facilities are on the Avenger’s radar?”

“No. But Hydra has lost track of the Black Widow again.”

“So much for her effectiveness being impaired once she revealed her identity to the world. I want the evacuation drills kept up, and that includes Puente Antiguo. Do you understand, doctor?”

“Inconvenient.” The Surgeon was not one for many words.

“It’s going to be even more inconvenient if you have to fight the Hulk,” Fox pointed out. “You don’t want to lose all the work you’ve put in to whatever it is you’re doing, do you?” 

The Surgeon vibrated. “No.”

“Evacuation drills.” He turned back to Theo, who was trying to hide his smile at his former surrogate parent’s discomfiture. “Go on.”

“I have the full report on the Witch’s battle against the Master of the Mystic Arts.”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “Let me get this straight. Of all the different possible magic-related names she could use, she called herself The Witch.”

Theo eyed him with a smirk. “It’s almost as ridiculous as calling yourself Fox, Stiles.” 

“Okay, chimera’s got sass this morning.” He had made everyone call him Fox, because that was who he was now. Only Theo had permission to use his old name. “Make sure I get a copy of the report. It’ll give me a good laugh when I’m feeling down. Anything else?”

“Not this week.”

“Keep working, Theo.” Stiles turned to the Surgeon. “I’m going to ask again, though you’ve given me the same response for the last six months. Do you have a progress report?”

“Success imminent.”

That caused a subtle stir throughout the entire room. For the last six months the Doctors had given two-word status reports on how close their own project was to reaching its conclusion. Stiles still didn’t know what exactly what it was, though he had spied on the Doctors enough to know it had to do with the creation of a suitable host for an entity from the past. Part of the deal that he had made with the Surgeon was that he wouldn’t demand to know any details. 

“Oh, excellent.” Stiles’s smile was as sincere as he could manage. “You’ll let me know if you’re successful?”

“Affirmative.”

“Anything else to report?”

“No.” 

Stiles stared at the monitor for a second. This was important news, but he had learned from experience that the Doctors could not be bullied. He turned to Boddicker, instead. He was a druid like Deaton, but he was far more radical than Deaton had ever imagined being in the veterinarian’s worst nightmare. Stiles had brought him on for his own project: controlling one of the most powerful supernatural sources of energy on Earth.

The Nemetons.

“The facilities at Brasilia and Zhengzhou are almost complete. We will have broken ground in Toulouse and Egypt. Greenland and Logashkino will have to wait until spring.”

Stiles frowned, but Kyllian had anticipated his disappointment.

“The average temperature in Logashkino right now is thirty degrees. We won’t be able to build until next summer. Greenland is even worse.”

“We need to have those bases set up as soon as possible. We’ve been using Von Strucker just as much as Von Strucker has been using us. While he gets the Avengers to play whack-a-mole, I’m using the resulting chaos to get the things we need done. You _have_ followed all the protocols to make sure that these new facilities can’t be tied to Hydra?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you just need to figure out a way to start construction earlier than spring. It’s going to be really tight fit if all of us have to share Zhengzhou and Brasilia.” He looked up at the rest of you. “We’ve had six months of relative peace and quiet, but I wouldn’t count on that lasting one day longer. Neither should any of you.”

Fox paused to let the words sink. “Okay. Same time, next week.”

###### October 30th, 2014. Mischief Night. Beacon County.

As Scott McCall crossed the city limit of Beacon Hills on California State Road 191, he was tearing down the road so fast and the rain was coming down in such thick sheets that it created the illusion that he was driving his motorcycle underwater. It took all his strength and his reflexes to keep his bike going in the right direction, while making sure he didn’t rear-end any cars or drift into the oncoming lane of traffic.

The storm had started soon after he had passed through Yuba City. At first, it had been a nuisance, somewhere between a drizzle and a light rain, but the farther he traveled north the heavier — and colder — the rain grew. Any other rider would have had significant trouble with it, and eventually they would have had to pull over. He was an alpha werewolf, able to shrug off multiple gunshot wounds, electrocution, and being stabbed through the stomach with a word. 

Yet, his fingers were numb. His toes were numb. Even his knees were numb.

He could pull over until the rain stopped, but he was less than five minutes from home, and he felt pretty sure he could make it. With conditions as bad as they were he couldn’t even spare his attention long enough to check his watch, but it had to be close to seven. He wanted to have some evening left.

Beacon Hills rolled by, wetly shining in the chilly autumn night. People hurried by on the streets, wrapped in winter jackets and clutching their umbrellas against the infrequent but still strong gusts. Life went on even in the face of terrible weather and the passage of time. Halloween decorations filled the store windows and the yards, but the rain had put the candles of the jack o’ lanterns out. 

It had been a quiet month. No new supernaturals had arrived since the beginning of September according to the pack, and nothing bad had happened even remotely connected to the supernatural since July when Emily Walcott had been caught by a deputy with a corpse in her trunk. Scott had not needed to come home; it had become a simple to cover up the reveal without racking up a body count. Deputy Strauss had been the most recent human brought into the know as a matter of necessity.

Scott had been surprised at first to learn about the Walcotts, and then a little horrified. The Walcotts didn’t know how their family had become wendigoag, but it didn’t change the fact that they could only draw sustenance from human flesh. He couldn’t imagine how they were able to live.

One of these days, Scott worried, someone was going to discover their secrets and they would refuse to be amenable to being part of what amounted to a massive conspiracy. He still didn’t know what he was going to do on that day.

He shook his head to clear it of those negative thoughts. Worrying about what he couldn’t change was exactly why he had driven home from U.C. Davis on a Thursday evening, when he still had a class on Friday.

Isaac’s Subaru and his mother’s Dodge were sitting in the driveway. They were both home. When Isaac had started community college, Derek had bought him a new car as a congratulatory gift. Derek had also tried to give Scott a car as a graduation present, but Scott had demurred. He was touched by the offer, but he felt he had to turn it down. It would be weird to accept a gift from someone over which he had recently claimed authority. Instead, he had asked Derek instead to make sure his mother’s old car ran well, so Scott didn’t have to worry about it breaking down if some new trouble arose.

Derek hadn’t seemed to be offended; he had only smiled and nodded.

He pulled his bike up next to the back porch, before pulling a tarp out of his saddlebag. The motorcycle, he had budgeted, would have to last his undergraduate career, so he kept as good a care as he knew how. He may have rushed a little bit quicker than usual, especially considering the conditions, but even he was beginning to shiver a little. Before going in through the kitchen door, he grabbed his backpack out of the other saddlebag. He had some work to do. 

His mother was standing over the sink, drying a glass when he came in, but looking at the door. She had to have heard him arrive. “Scott, what are you doing here?”

“Hi, Mom. Don’t worry; there’s nothing bad happening.”

“I don’t want to sound like I’m not happy to see you, but it’s the middle of the week. You just decided to come home? If I had known, I would have saved some dinner for you.”

“It’s no big deal. I only had one class tomorrow, and it’s a lecture I can watch online. I …”

He trailed off as Melissa had finally taken a good long look at him, and her face screwed up angrily. 

“You’re soaked to the bone! You’re pale. You drove through that entire storm on your bike!”

“Uh, yeah. I’m—” 

“Scott!” She stormed over to where he was and put her hands on his face. “You’re freezing!”

“I’ll be fine in a little bit.”

His mother’s mouth tightened with disapproval. “You’ll be fine. _You’ll be fine._ You’ll be hypothermic, mister, that is what! You won’t do that again. You get upstairs right now, you get out of those clothes and you take a warm — not hot! — shower.”

“Mom—”

“You go up there now! I know you’re in college now and all grown up, but that doesn’t mean you get to do stupid, reckless things. Driving through a rainstorm in the freezing cold! Go.” She took a menacing step toward him. “Go!” 

Scott fled from the kitchen. This hadn’t been the reception he had expected. He was a little surprised. In the living room, Isaac sprawled on the couch reading what looked like a biography of Michelangelo. One of his classes at Beacon County Community College was art history, after all. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Scott lifted his hand in greeting.

“Someone’s in trouble.”

The alpha shrugged, noticing he was dripping water everywhere. “I don’t know why she’s so—”

“I don’t hear any water running!” 

Both boys looked back at the kitchen. 

“After I get out of trouble, wanna do something?” 

“Sure, I’m up for it. It’s too early for me to fall asleep reading about Renaissance Italians.”

Glancing one last time behind him to make sure his mother wasn’t going to charge out and grab him by the ear, Scott went up to his room and started shedding his clothes as fast as he could. He didn’t want him mother to get even angrier with him, though he didn’t understand why she was so upset. Surely, after so many years, she understood that it would take a lot more than a rainstorm to hurt him.

On the other hand, it did feel good to get out of those water-logged clothes. He dropped them on the tile floor of the bathroom, so they wouldn’t get the carpet in his room wet. He’d do some laundry before he went back to school on Monday. Making sure he followed his mother directions, he turned on the water. A hot shower sounded really good, but he knew as well as she did if that he was on the borderline of hypothermia, warming himself up slowly was better.

A smile crossed his face. He was in trouble with Mom, but it was … _normal_ trouble. It might have been stupid of him to drive in the rain, but it was something that any person his age might have done. He’d make it up to her. Then he’d do his homework and hang with Isaac and being normal.

There had been times when he hadn’t believed he’d ever make it to school. He had wanted to go ever since he realized that one day high school would end and there would be something after. But, to be truthful, he had always imagined going to school with …

“Not going to go there,” he said out loud to himself as he stepped into the shower.

At first he had thought he would skip college altogether, but his mother had insisted with the same type of ferocious intensity she had displayed when he had arrived home this evening. Then he had thought he would go to a community college and get his general education requirements first, but his mother had insisted he would go directly to U.C. Davis. Finally, he had thought with college being so expensive, he’d commute from home. It was only a two hour drive, after all, and he did have supernatural stamina. That had also been a no go with Mom. Scott had slowly chugged his way around to the conclusion that his mother meant for him to have a life away from Beacon Hills, from the pack, from the Nemeton. From the past and all the bullshit that came with it. 

Finally, as a compromise, he had told her that he would come back on the weekends when his work permitted. And he would come back on breaks. He couldn’t take years-long hiatus from his responsibilities as protector and leader. Being someone normal simply wasn’t possible. Not anymore. Not for him.

He couldn’t go back to pretending that the supernatural side of him wasn’t as important as the mundane side. 

Stepping out of the bathroom, he rubbed at his head with a towel. He did feel so much better; now that he was warm, he realized how dull he had felt beforehand. He shook off the lethargy, expanded his senses, and in doing so he caught the end of a conversation.

“You don’t remember what day it is, do you?” Isaac asked his mother. If he had to guess, they would have to be in the kitchen. 

“Of course, I do. It’s Mischief Night. If they weren’t making me work Halloween, I’d be at the hospital.”

“Yeah, but … maybe he never told you. He told me last year; he wasn’t feeling very good. This night, two years ago, Scott and Stiles broke into Coach’s office and pranked him. They removed all the screws from his furniture.”

“Gee, you think that maybe there could have been a reason Scott didn’t tell me? I would have grounded him.”

“You don’t understand …” Isaac hesitated. Scott wished he’d just let it drip. “It’s the last thing he did with Stiles before things got bad. So, in a way …”

“It’s the anniversary of when he lost him. Why don’t people tell me these things? We could have gone down there and surprised him, instead of driving up here like a madman.”

“Obviously, he didn’t want us to know, and he doesn’t want to make a big deal.”

Scott’s head sagged as he stopped listening, because it was true. He hadn’t wanted to make a big deal of this night, though it turned out he inadvertently had done exactly that. He had always known it was stupid to drive over a hundred miles in a downpour but the idea of spending all night in a dorm room by himself thinking about that night had been … intolerable. He opened the door to his bathroom and shut it real hard, hard enough that Isaac must have heard it and they would change the topic.

He pulled on a set of sweats from his dresser and a pair of fuzzy slippers that Malia had bought for him last Christmas, before going downstairs.

“Have a seat.” Melissa pointed at one of the chairs at the table the moment he entered the kitchen. She put a large bowl of pozole in front of him. Steam was coming off of it. Isaac smirked across from him, holding his own spoon.

“You guys haven’t eaten already?” Scott asked, confused.

“We ate.” Melissa put another bowl in front of Isaac and set a plate of cornbread in the middle. 

“You made this for me?”

“It’s called a microwave, honey. These were leftovers from dinner, which we would have waited to eat with you if you had used this thing called a phone and let us know you were coming.”

Scott turned to look at Isaac who smirked at him before he started did in to his own meal. “But you’ve …”

“I’m a growing werewolf.”

As good as he felt after the shower, he felt even better with his mother’s cooking in his belly. He had two whole bowls and some cornbread before he told his mother he couldn’t eat anymore. Isaac finished his own bowl off before pushing it away and studying him. 

“So what did you want to do tonight?”

Scott shrugged. He really didn’t have any plans other than not feeling bad. “We could play some Xbox. I have a lot of homework, but none of it’s due until Monday.”

“Me, too. For some reason that I don’t get it, there’s a ten-page paper due in Art History on Wednesday. I chose to talk about the development of Mannerism because I’m apparently a masochist.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“So that makes two of us,” Isaac snickered. “Honestly, I understand it. It’s an art style that categorized the Late Renaissance that employed standard departures from realism designed to ennoble and elevate the subject. The artist creates an image of a person that’s better than they actually were. I’m half done with the paper already. I just need to get a few more citations for the second half of the paper, so it’s not completely my own bullshit.”

“It sounds like you have a little more than bullshit, Isaac.”

“Welcome to the liberal arts.”

“I wish. I have to study for a test in anatomy. There’s so much memorization.”

Isaac smiled. “Learning all the bones in the human body?”

Scott blinked; Isaac’s joke sounded like a reference to something. He couldn’t remember exactly what it could be. “I have to finish some lab reports, too. I though you liked to study with Allison.” 

“I do.”

“You mean he likes to pretend he’s studying with Allison,” Melissa said from over by the sink. “I know what people your age are like.” 

Isaac protested. “We actually study! Allison’s really serious about her criminology degree. Like so serious, she gets mad if I distract her. But she’s on a trip this week; her and her dad left yesterday. She told me she’d be back by Tuesday.”

“A trip?”

“Hunter stuff. They’ve got some big meeting to go to in Dallas. People are coming from all over the world to meet the new Argent Matriarch. I really doubt they want her werewolf boyfriend sitting next to her when they do.” 

“You’re probably right. I’ll guess I’ll just see her next week.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epigoni means "offspring" and refers to the Seven Against Thebes.
> 
> "Michi" by Keiko Abe can be hard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo4I_bPwizs


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you spot the surprise fandom cameo?

###### November 2, 2014 – Dallas, Texas

While Allison was convincing the other families to meet, her father had rented a spa in a high-end suburb of the city. Chris Argent had not only reserved the whole facility, he had insisted that the normal staff simply not come to work on that day. When the owner had complained about the strange request, her father had simply doubled the payment. The owner had relented with no further fuss.

Advanced teams had arrived before dawn to set everything up, while the actual dignitaries arrived at staggered intervals through the morning. As their entourages gathered, security became ridiculously tight. A perimeter that a national president’s security detail would envy was established around the wooded and fenced-in grounds. It was an unprecedented event; never had so many family heads had been in one place at one time.

When they gathered in the central banquet hall for a pleasant lunch, it had been the first time that Allison had ever met most of them. After the meal, the leaders of all eight attending families gathered in a conference room. They represented five continents and spoke twenty different languages between them.

The Orocura had the smallest contingent, hailing from the Amazonas state in Brazil. There was only their leader and his eldest son; there weren’t many of the Orocura left, because the family had not only had to face supernatural threats but also decades of hostility to their indigenous traditions. On a moral level, Allison felt something had to be done to help this family who stuck by the Code even as their world was destroyed. While her family had nearly been destroyed by selfishness and hatred, they had stood strong while fighting a war on multiple fronts. On a practical level, she knew something had to be done before all the knowledge they possessed disappeared from the world.

The Khishchnik from Krasnoyarsk Krai had the largest contingent, eager to travel from the depths of their vast territory in Siberia. They matched the stereotype one would expect from Russian hunters: burly, rough, and jovial while simultaneously extraordinarily violent. At the lunch, the dozen members had acted as if they already knew everyone present even though Allison was sure they had never met anyone else in the room before. Their leader, Maxim Shoelevich, looked like he could wrestle an alpha werewolf by himself and his laughter boomed like cannon fire, but he never seemed to miss a single thing that was happening around him.

The Morgan family from the state of Georgia had almost declined to come. They had always resented the Argents for being an older and more respected family, and the urbanization of the southern region of the United States had slowly chipped away at their dedication to the Code. Even as their leader Evelyn proudly wore the eagle symbol of their family on a pendant, every other person in the room must have heard the rumors that they had begun to accept missions for money. 

As a consequence, the middle-aged married couple that jointly led the Holzfäller from Baden-Wurttemberg made a point of staying across the room from Ms. Morgan. They were extraordinarily proud of the purity of their heritage; even after so many centuries, the Black Forest still had its fair share of dangerous werewolf packs, especially after the Second World War.

The matron of the Waliyyi family from northern Benin, on the other hand, made a special effort to talk to Evelyn Morgan, but then again, her family had always been known for resolving situations with diplomacy rather than violence, though it was said that no one ever had the audacity to call them weak or cowardly to their face. Twice.

Araya Calavera had taken control of the security for the meeting without consulting anyone else. The Calaveras were the self-appointed enforcers of the Code, though different families resented their presumption to differing degrees. Araya Calavera didn’t care if they resented her or not. She would do what was necessary to keep all hunters within the bounds of proper behavior.

Yet, even she would never dare to question the integrity with the last family. The Lan Clan of China were wrapped in mystery and reserve, and it made them very intimidating. Dressed all in white, the clan head carried himself with a reserved aura of clear superiority. There had been many questions about his family over the years, and all of them had gone unanswered.

Still, Allison sat as the Matriarch of the Argent family from Lozère. While she could have claimed prominence, she had insisted that they used a circular table to indicate that no one family had authority over any of the others. It hadn’t been that way in the past. The Argents had, after all, set the Code which all but the Chinese followed. The Lan were far older and far more established than the Argents or any other family. If they had been interested in leaving China for any reason, their strict traditions of behavior could have dominated the families the way the Argent’s traditions did. On the other hand, they had been instrumental in encouraging the formation of families rather than allow individual, untrained hunters to tear around in the shadows, hurting the innocent and the guilty alike.

“Thank you all for coming,” Allison began. She was at least two decades younger than any other family head at the table, with the possible exception of the mysterious Lan Clan Leader, whose public name she didn’t know. She couldn’t even tell how old he was. “I know you have all traveled great distances, and I appreciate the effort and cost it took to meet.”

“Your reasoning was persuasive.” The elder Orocura spoke excellent English for someone rumored to avoid those of European descent as much as humanly possible. His family had kept to their duties, even as their very way of life was constantly imperiled by the authorities of their own country. The Amazon rain forest hid dangers which didn’t even have names in any of the bestiaries that Allison had read.

“We can see the potential value in changing the Code,” said Madame Waliyyi, the oldest person at the table as she had passed seventy some years ago. “Your family’s words were coined when those we must hunt menaced isolated communities with little resources of their own. Times have changed, and even a family of shapeshifters may be as much a victim of others as those on which they used to prey.”

Araya looked sour, but then again she always looked sour. 

“It’s more than just that. When the Code was first written, it was in response to the actions of La Bête du Gévaudan, a monster who killed over five hundred people on two continents. When set down by my family and when adopted by your families, the Code was formed with the best of intentions, but it was incomplete. And being incomplete, it is immoral.”

Allison’s statement created exactly the type of reaction she expected: surprise, anger, and disdain. Calling the Code immoral was calling into question the very purpose of their families. Even the Lan Clan Leader frowned slightly.

She raised her voice. “We know more now. We know that supernatural creatures do not have to be merciless killers. We know that not all supernatural creatures chose to become what they are. We know that their very culture has changed as our culture has changed. And, as my father taught me, what we know makes us responsible.”

Herr Holzfäller’s scowl was prodigious. “I think you have spent too much time with that True Alpha. I can guarantee you, most alphas will not be like him.”

“I’m aware of that. He’s an individual, just like every alpha is an individual. I’ve learned many things, and one of the things I’ve learned is the importance of intention versus impact. The intention of the Code was to govern our actions, with the goal of preventing supernatural creatures from using their gifts to terrorize and murder humans who couldn’t defend themselves. But the impact has been to very often to give cover to genocide.”

Madame Waliyyi clucked her tongue. “Harsh words, but true. Your grandfather and aunt certainly used it in that way.” 

“Changing the words of the Code is worthless if we don’t change the meaning behind them. Every one of our families made the determination to keep the secret of the supernatural to ourselves in order to limit interference in what we felt we had to do, but we have to understand that humans can be corrupted by greed, by hate, and by fear as completely as any supernatural creature. My family has demonstrated that beyond all doubt.” Allison nodded to the elderly Hausa woman. “As far as I can tell, we have never critically re-examined our role in this world. It is now more important than ever that we do so.”

“And you think, child, that we are wise enough to change traditions that have served our families and those we protect for centuries.” The Khishchnik patriarch couldn’t quite hide his condescension behind a smile. 

“The Chitauri Invasion changed everything. We took this duty onto ourselves because we believed that the world would not believe nor would it be able to cope with the knowledge that supernatural creatures existing among us. But now, their world no longer consists of only humans. They know about the Chitauri, the Asgardians, and the Dark Elves. The idea that there are other races sharing this planet with them is no longer beyond belief.”

“No one can argue with that,” admitted Lafayette Morgan. “But what do you propose to do about it?”

“I have no idea,” Allison answered, “but after my experiences of the last few years, I doubt that changing the wording of the Code will be enough. We need to have a real discussion about how we should move forward. Nothing should be off the table. We need to discuss if we are even necessary anymore.”

That admission caused another stir in the room. People began talking at once, and Allison let them continue on until it died down. “I happen to know that SHIELD is reorganizing under another name, we all know the Avengers exist, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that individual governments are beginning to take steps to deal with the concept of enhanced individuals. A possible course of action — which I am not advocating but simply bringing up — is for our families to offer our knowledge and services to them.”

“ _No!_ ” objected the elder Orocura. “Our government cannot be trusted. No government can be trusted.”

Allison swallowed her immediate retort. “I understand where you are coming from. I don’t have the answer right now, but I do know that any decision that any of us makes will affect every other family. We should talk about it at least.”

The Lan Clan Leader leaned forward. “I agree.” It had been the first words he said at the table.

Silence reigned in the room as they considered the possibility. Allison kept her face calm; she was asking them to change centuries of tradition.

“There is an alternative.” 

A stranger, who had not been in the room a moment ago, stepped forward, holing both palms up in a gesture of peace, even though he bore a sheathed sword on his back and wore strange clothes. He radiated calm, and surprisingly no one leapt to violence even though they were instantly alert. They were hunters, after all.

“Who are you?” Allison demanded. “It’s not wise to walk into a meeting to which you were not invited.”

“I meant no offense, Allison Argent. I simply needed to make sure I would not be kept away. I have been sent here on behalf of the Ancient One, the Sorcerer Supreme of this dimension.” He smiled. “I am Karl Mordo.”

###### November 4, 2014 – Nootamaa, Estonia

Steve could always see it in their eyes. The absolute desperation to cling to something in the face of defeat. The worst type of soldier was the one who didn’t know how to lose. Who couldn’t conceive of losing. They were always the ones willing to do anything to win. “Do your worst! Hydra is eternal! Cut off one head and—”

Captain America punched the commander hard enough that he flew halfway across the room. “Give it a rest. I swear, if I have to hear that one more time …”

“You’ll do what?” Hawkeye dodged into the room from around a corner, narrowly evading the automatic weapons fire. 

“I’ll probably swear.” Cap stepped up to other side of the entrance and peeked around it. With a series of hand gestures, he informed his teammate of a plan. “One. Two. Three!” He threw his shield bouncing it off each of the three CMCRs and the wall. Between the impact of his shield and their weapons’ own significant recoil, the Hydra soldiers were knocked completely off balance. 

Hawkeye spun around and fired three arrows in rapid succession. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. See any other hot spots on your way in here?”

“Nope.” The archer did a checked the room’s corners out of habit. “All I saw were die-hard fanatics looking for glory and stragglers looking for the nearest exit.”

This command center was composed of concentric circles of work stations beneath a dome open to the sky. It didn’t seem particular secure, which was why Hydra had captured it so easily from the remains of SHIELD after the Battle of Washington D.C. It had taken precious weeks of careful diplomacy to get the Estonian government’s permission to launch a covert assault and more time to get all their forces together. They couldn’t ignore the base; Tony had found intelligence at the last Hydra location they had hit that the scepter and the enhanced individuals created by it could possibly be here. During the operation, Steve had seen no sign of their presence. In fact, while there had been plenty of scientific equipment, none of it looked remotely like something designed to create super soldiers.

“Hawkeye, what was this place’s original purpose?”

“Meteorological Research. That’s why they called it the Finger.” 

“Huh?” Captain looked over at the other man.

Hawkeye put his pointer finger in his mouth than raised it into the sky. “I think it’s going to rain.”

Captain rolled his eyes in frustration and activated his communication unit. “Come in, Banner.”

“Yeah, this … this is Banner.” Bruce would never be truly comfortable in combat situations or with military protocol. “Is everything okay?”

“We’ve secured the command center. Have Iron Man and Thor handled those weapons batteries? Over.”

“Uh … uh, let me see.” Banner held the button down on the mike. Suddenly, there was an explosion that rocked the entire place. “Looks like Thor just took care of it. Yeah. Yeah he did.” Pause. “Oh, yes, over.”

Steve killed the connection before he sighed. He didn’t want Bruce to think he was frustrated with _him._

“What’s got your flag bunched, Cap?”

“We’ve been at this for ten months and we haven’t made any progress in finding Loki’s Scepter or any of the enhanced operatives we’ve know about.”

Hawkeye smiled at him and turned to keep an eye on the hallway.

“What’s so funny?”

“I didn’t think impatience would be one of your flaws. To be quite honest,” Hawkeye remarked sardonically, “I didn’t think you had any flaws.”

“You’ve been reading too many comic books, but I’m not impatient, I’m worried. Hydra was never going to make it easy on us, but every moment that passes and we stop them, they’ll be that much closer to the super soldiers they need.”

Hawkeye shrugged. “There’s always going to be enemies, Cap.”

Steve grunted. “You’re talking like a spy, but this is war, and the scope of trouble never stays steady; unless they’re stopped, small wars cascade into larger wars. If Hydra manages to create viable enhanced operatives, how long will it be before other countries do the same? The Soviets have already tried.”

“Did I hear someone talking about me?” Black Widow entered the room, moving directly to a control station and hit a button which opened a hatch in the roof. “They’re talking about me again, Tony.”

“So rude.” Iron Man descended from the sky, landing with a dull thump on the ground. Without even waiting to explain, he walked over to another console and inserted one of his data-mining devices. 

“When you are two are done auditioning for vaudeville, can I get a sitrep?”

“The show must go on, Cap, but clean-up is forty percent done,” Natasha reported. “I don’t think we’re going to find what we’re looking for here.”

Steve moved so he look over shoulder at the tactical tablet she was checking. “I agree with you. The defenses were too light and the troops weren’t led with any sense of urgency. If this was where the Scepter was, we’d have had a lot worse time of it.”

Tony snapped his head from where he was waiting for the download. “The intelligence I found was solid. I checked it out with Maria and Natasha and everything.” 

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Yeah, Star-spangled Man, but you were thinking it.” 

Steve left Natasha to do her thing while he went over to talk to Tony. The genius playboy philanthropist could be prickly on his best days, but he often wore his insecurities on his sleeve. For Tony, nothing stung worse than failure; nothing rattled his cage like being fooled. His friend simply wasn’t used to not being the one to come up with the solution.

On the other hand, he felt like a little bit of a hypocrite. Hadn’t he just been frustrated with the lack of progress? That simply meant that he understood Tony on a level that the other members of the team didn’t. Clint was a professional, keeping a firm line between what he did and who he was. Thor was a demigod and had been a prince since birth. Natasha had been shaped into who she was by incident, while Bruce had been formed by accident. Of all the Avengers, only he and Tony had voluntarily chosen to transform themselves into what they were now. Steve had been a lower-class asthmatic orphan. He had chosen to serve his country by risking Erskine’s process. Tony had been an upper-class yet emotionally-stunted orphan. He had chosen to deny himself the comfortable life he could have lived by embracing danger to help others. 

Sometimes doing the right thing was rewarding. Sometimes it wasn’t.

“Tony, I wasn’t criticizing you.”

“Hmph. I was criticizing me. I should have realized that this place wasn’t suitable for the type of research they would need to do. They would have had to redo this place completely and that would have bene impossible with how the Estonians watched it.

“We had to check.”

“I know, I know.” Tony grimaced at him. “Can’t you let me have my daily pity party in peace?”

“No,” Steve replied but he softened it with a smile. “Because it’s getting in the way of my obsessive need to smash Hydra. You’re the only one who can help me do it.”

Tony’s face screwed up. “Were you just trying to butter me up?”

“Yes, I was. Is it working?”

The man wearing a multi-billion dollar suit of armor thought about it for about ten seconds. “Yes.”

Suddenly, the armor started speaking aloud. “Sir, we may have found something.”

“That’s what you said last time, Jarvis.”

“Would you like to hear what I have discovered, or would you like to criticize my inability to predict the actions of homicidal fascists?”

Tony smiled. “Looks likes some A.I. didn’t get his coffee this morning. So, what did you find?”

“Personnel transfers, sir, from this facility to one in Puente Antiguo, New Mexico.”

“Bring them up, exterior holographic display.”

All four of the Avengers in the room hurried over to look. While Steve had been feeling the most frustration, all of them were dedicated to putting down Hydra and that meant getting rid of their enhanced program. Using the Iron Man suit’s emitters, JARVIS projected the digital documents where everyone could see them.

Clint was the first there. “Did you say Puente Antiguo? I’ve been there; that place should have been closed down years ago.”

JARVIS recited his findings. “That base was declared inactive by Director Nicholas Fury on January 1st, 2011. It was designated to be fully decommissioned by January 1st of this year. However, these transfer forms indicate that personnel were still being moved there in December of 2013.”

“Why was the base there in the first place?” Natasha asked. 

“It’s where Big Daddy Odin grounded Thor for his own good,” Tony quipped. “Which makes it an excellent place to study his step-brother’s glow stick. But records of these weren’t in Nat’s Hydra dump.”

“That is correct, sir. These records were excluded from the central storage files in the Triskelion.”

“Now, that’s interesting,” Steve said. They had always suspected that Hydra might not have stored everything at SHIELD headquarters. “Clint can you raise Thor? I want his opinion on this, too.” 

“Will do.”

“Oh.” Tony had been studying the documents. “Oh. Gotcha. Gotcha right there.”

“What did you find?”

“The routing list.” 

At that, Natasha leaned forward. “You wanted a lead on an enhanced, Steve? I think we’ve got one. This transfer was approved by Mieczysław Stilinski, head of the Department of Occult Armaments. He’s the one who claimed Puente Antiguo.”

Steve nodded. “Now, we’ve got a trail for the Fox.”

###### November 5, 2014 – Key Largo, Florida

Peter watched the rented house from the road. Even in the very early hours of the morning, he could tell that it had been painted a delicate shade of egg-shell blue. Like most of the homes on the south side of Key Largo, it was raised on pylons so a storm surge wouldn’t destroy everything in the home. Other than that, it was small for what his quarry would be used to.

There was a single vehicle in the driveway: a black SUV with California license plates. Such predictability would have been hilarious if it didn’t make so much sense. 

Glancing down at his watch, Peter Hale smiled to himself; the old man was about to have a very bad day, even at four in the morning.

His feet crunched on the gravel surrounding the house. There were no lawns on this part of the island. The terrain wouldn’t support them. He leapt the chain-link fence easily. It would have barely kept out a normal human. Against a predator like him, there was no chance. 

However, he was determined not to be overconfident, so he noted the location of the security cameras. He doubted that Gerard would have his security alert the local police. Instead, there would be a room in the house where the cameras could be observed and recorded. He would simply have to make sure that he destroyed the footage before he left. It would be that easy.

Peter drew his lock picks out of his pocket. He had learned how to break-and-enter when he was young. It had been one of the ways he had kept himself from being bored. He hadn’t needed to work. He hadn’t needed to study that much; he was very clever and he absorbed knowledge simply by being around it. So there has been plenty of time to waste, when it was expect that nothing he ever did would be … significant.

He had certainly confounded those expectations, hadn’t he?

The front door to the house was unlocked, and Peter was instantly suspicious. Gerard Argent knew that he was hunted. The bastard had few friends and only limited resources now. He would never leave the front door of his house open. While a werewolf could burst through the door of a rented bungalow, the act would give the wily hunter a chance to be prepared. For someone like Gerard, that would be all the warning the old man would need.

So it had to be a trap.

Peter was never a Boy Scout, but “Be Prepared” was a good motto to follow. Though honestly, while he preferred for his enemies to never see him coming, he could always make sure that he had a way to even the odds if they did, like the flash grenade he had in his pocket. No hunter would ever expect a werewolf to be carrying one of them. He moved it to his hand and he opened the door.

“Good evening, Peter.” 

Of all the voices that he expected to hear in a rented home in Southern Florida, that had not been one of them. Perhaps he should have.

“You.”

“Yes, me. Unfortunately, you’ve arrived too late. Gerard must have been informed of your impending visit and has relocated.” Deucalion had a glass of wine in his hand and was sitting on the couch.

“Or, he caught wind of you.”

“I doubt that.” Deucalion smiled. “Wine?”

Peter put the grenade back in his pocket and flipped on the light. “Isn’t it a little late? Or a little early?”

“A human consideration. I appreciate the vintage, and I’m quite sure you will as well. We are nocturnal creatures.”

“You were sitting in the dark.”

“It doesn’t bother me, as you can quite imagine. While I have regained the use of my eyes, I haven’t forgotten the ease with which I used to get around without them.” Deucalion poured Peter a glass even though the Hale hadn’t said he would drink it.

“What are you doing here?”

The former Demon Wolf held up a glass to Peter. He was being insistent. Peter shrugged went over and took it. It was very good and very expensive. It mollified him somewhat to be drinking on Gerard’s tab.

“What do you think I’m doing here?”

“I would say you were here to gouge out Gerard’s eyes, but I really think that you have somehow become a convert to the Scott McCall School of Wishful Thinking and wouldn’t do that now. So I’m not quite sure what you are doing here.”

“Always the cynic, Peter. You are partially right. I’m not here to get revenge on an old man. I’m also not here to forgive him or anything maudlin like that. I was here to get information to which he had access. Information that I don’t think I could easily retrieve anywhere else. Information that might be important to the Hale Pack.”

“Now you have my full attention.” Peter sat down on a chair across from his surprise guest. “What information is this?”

“Information about the Dread Doctors. Information about Stiles Stilinski. Information about La Bête du Gévaudan.”

“That monster is dead; the Argents never shut up about that. It’s been dead for centuries.”

“Yes. It is dead. But not for very much longer.”

###### November 6, 2014 – Puente Antiguo, Arizona – The Full Moon

“Sirs.” The technician down on the floor looked up at the balcony. “The subject is ready.”

“Prepare,” intoned the Surgeon. “Start countdown.”

To the Surgeon’s left, the Pathologist leaned forward over the edge of the railing and then turned his whole body to face the Surgeon. The implication was clear. He wanted to be down there on the floor of the laboratory with the subject now that they were so close.

“Remain here,” ordered the Surgeon. He was in charge. He had always been in charge. He didn’t need to explain himself to his colleague, and the Pathologist did not need to be instructed twice.

On his other side, the Geneticist studied the monitoring technology provided by Hydra. It was more modern looking than the equipment they had previously used, but this had been constructed in a clean room by human-guided robots and not by hand as they had carefully created their previous Operating Theaters.

“Status of subject?” He asked her.

“His condition is promising.” 

The Surgeon did not acknowledge the Geneticist’s words verbally. They had worked together for so long they could send information to and from each other with fluctuations of their electromagnetic field. 

The door to the Operating Theater opened and the subject was rolled in. As instructed, he had been tied down. The Surgeon had once been told the name of the individual and their identity but he had quite frankly forgotten that information once he determined that this was the success he was waiting for. The only thing he cared to know was how many more treatments it would take before completion.

“Stop.” The subject began pleading. “Please, stop. What do you want? I don’t know what you want.”

None of the six Hydra technicians on the floor of the Operating Theater answered him. They had been instructed not to do so, though the technicians didn’t know why.

They didn’t realize that the emotional responses of the subject were key to manifestation. Success had been achieved, tentatively, but continued dehumanization was absolutely vital. This teenager had been kind to others and respectful to his parents. He had moved to the head of the list of candidates when he had appeared in the local newspapers as a hero after saving an old woman from a fire in her apartment. After much experimentation, the Doctors had come across the key to success. To create something truly evil required the corruption of something truly good. 

It was a sacrifice.

“Please. Please don’t do this.”

The Geneticist gestured to the screen and both the Surgeon and the Pathologist followed her motion. Could it be?

“Please!”

The subject started to struggle in his restraints, but to no avail. He was getting more desperate. Angrier. 

One of the technicians checked a feed. “Two minutes to induction.”

The Surgeon moved to the screen, and in his haste, he gave the Geneticist a mild shove. She didn’t protest. They only had eyes for the results. The Pathologist raised a hand and pointed at the subject. The dark energy had begun to pool around the subject, taking its wispy ephemeral form.

“Transformation.” The Surgeon breathed.

The technicians stepped back. They had seen the transformation before, but it had only happened after they had started the high-frequency induction. The lead technician looked up to the Doctors on a platform above for instruction. “Sirs?”

“Transformation without frequency.”

His fellow Doctors crowded to the rail to witness their ultimate success.

La Bête du Gévaudan transformed fully on the table. With a gesture, the Surgeon released the restraints, allowing the Beast to spring free. The Pathologist, for his part, sealed the room. 

“What are you doing?” cried the Chief Technician.

It should have been obvious. The Beast, free and fully transformed, tore into them. Two of the technicians had stun batons. They were useless. Two of them, against protocol, had carried guns. Equally useless. The Pathologist marked that their deaths had taken a minute and 23 seconds. 

The rage engendered by the Beast’s rebirth subsided. The Surgeon speculated that the Beast would have been strong enough to kill even him and his fellow Doctors if they had been closer enough. It would have been acceptable to him, to die for this resurrection. But now, thanks to Hydra, he would be able to see the results of his work.

The Beast subsided, changing back into human form, returning to a face he once knew so well. 

“So tell me, Marcel,” Sebastian Valet said, covered in blood and looking up from the slaughtered technicians to the Doctors high above. “What have I missed?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone has concerns about my imagined hunter families, please let me know. I wanted them to be diverse, and I went with the naming conventions we got in the show. For those who might have caught it, the Morgan family are the hunters who went rogue in _Monstrous_ , 4x10.


	3. Chapter 3

###### November 7, 2014 – Beacon Hills

Scott looked down at his hands as they crossed the city limits of Beacon Hills. Patches of sunlight struggled their way between obscuring trees and through the car’s windows and tried to warm them. He had so much he wanted to say to Allison, but he wasn’t sure if he had the right to say any of it anymore. He thought that as time passed after they had broken up, it would become easier to talk to her. For some strange reason, the opposite seemed to be true. 

Allison had picked up Scott in front of his dormitory and drove him home to Beacon Hills. He would have usually ridden his bike back after classes on a Friday afternoon, but she had called the night before and asked if she could drive him home. She wanted to talk to him alone about what had happened in Dallas, and then she wanted to go straight to Dr. Deaton’s to get his impression afterward. Scott had listened over the last two hours as she talked about meeting the family heads and the surprising appearance of Mordo.

He had tried to be supportive, but it was harder than he though it should be. He didn’t know to whom she was speaking. Was she talking to him as a friend? To an alpha? To _her_ alpha? To all three at once? He longed — not for the first time — for the days when he could talk to her without fear of saying the wrong thing. When he had talked to her simply to make sure he was on her mind. Now everything had become so complex that he found he couldn’t even answer her questions without working out what he wanted to say ahead of time.

In the end, he had to say something. He didn’t want her to think that he hadn’t been paying attention for found her problems uninteresting. “He just appeared in the middle of the room? Wow.” 

It was so lame that he wanted to crawl under his seat. He wasn’t a high-school freshman who didn’t know how to talk to girls; he was someone who had fought by her side and risked death or worse to save her.

“I think it was necessary. We had way too much security, and it wouldn’t take a tactical genius to figure out that we would never allow a stranger to crash our meeting. I also think that the families, including Dad, were making a point with the extra security.” Allison shrugged. “In any event, I’m glad he did what was necessary to get into the room. It gave us an option right away, when I didn’t think we had many.”

“So what do you think of Mordo?”

“He’s powerful, but we’ve met powerful people before. Beyond that, I’m in the dark. I didn’t know anything about sorcerers. Some of the families knew about the Masters of the Mystic Arts, but what they were able to share sounded more like fairy tales to me. I mean, seriously, their leader is only referred to as the Ancient One.” Allison grimaced at him in disbelief. “On the other hand, his proposal could be exactly what we need.”

“So why do you want to talk to Deaton? He’s not a sorcerer.”

“I need an outside perspective, and I’ve always admired Alan’s ability to take himself out of a situation in order to make objective observations. He also makes it very clear when he’s basing something on speculation. It also might be good to learn what the druids know of these Masters.”

“Okay.” Scott turned to look out the window, where they had just passed the turn-off to the high school. Cross-country practice would be ending.

“I want your opinion, too.”

“Why?” Scott winced at the tone of his own voice. It had been remarkably bitter, and he wasn’t sure from where that had come. He should be happy that she wanted to hear what he thought.

Allison didn’t reply verbally; she glanced at him with a _what was that?_ look on her face. 

He winced once more and opened his mouth to apologize, but he couldn’t make himself do it. The words stuck in his throat, so he snapped his jaws shut with an audible click. He had asked a question, and he wanted an answer. It was only fair.

“Are you serious right now?”

“I don’t see why you would want my opinion on something so big. I’m a college freshman.” He shrugged at her continued glare. “And if you say I’m a True Alpha, I’m going to throw myself out of this moving car.”

“But you _are._ ”

“What does that mean exactly? No one has ever told me!” Scott felt like he had lost control of himself. He didn’t know why he was saying these things but he couldn’t stop. “Peter and Gerard still pushed me around for weeks. Being a True Alpha didn’t help me stop Deucalion! All it did was endanger every single person I love. Oh yeah, I broke a mountain ash line when Jennifer was going to kill our parents, but do you know what? Any _human_ could have done that. _Coach_ could have done that. It didn’t help me—” 

Allison rolled her eyes. 

Scott snarled at her, fangs and eyes and everything. He was breathing so heavily he was afraid he might hyperventilate. For her part, Allison didn’t flinch or go for a weapon. Eventually, he mastered himself before answering in a calmer voice. “I’m not qualified to help you decide on the future of your family. I was barely qualified to graduate high school.”

“Is this about SHIELD? Is this about Stiles?” 

“No.” He said sharply. Then, more softly. “Yes. Maybe. It’s about …”

She drove right past the road to the animal clinic. 

“It was blind chance that Peter picked me in the woods that night. The truth is I’m not like you or Derek or Peter or even Alan. I wasn’t born into this. I wasn’t raised to be this. I certainly didn’t plan to become this or even choose it to become it. For a little while there, I believed …” He licked his lips. “Derek talked to me about my legacy, and Mom talks to me about caring enough to do something, and Alan talks to me about responsibility, and I listened to them for a long time, but even then I knew what had really happened. I was just a naive idiot who got bit by a monster and was just too damn stubborn to die.”

“Is that what you think? Well, fuck you.”

Scott felt his stomach drop at her response. Allison was angry and hurt. He hadn’t seen her like this since she had challenged him in her bedroom after he had tried to warn her about the Alpha Pack. In an effort to make his point, he had overpowered her, and he had listened to her heartbeat spike like a startled deer.

It hadn’t been her bruised wrist which had angered her back then. It hadn’t been the idea that he was worried about her, though she frequently grew exasperated with his need to protect her. His concern hadn’t the problem; it was his doubt in her ability to affect the outcome, which he had proceeded to demonstrate by using his greater strength. 

Back when they had been able to talk freely, she had confessed that she could never handle people doubting her. It was why she had been so angry when Scott had doubted her willingness to accept him being a werewolf and that anger had driven her into Kate’s plans. Her father had doubted her ability to handle her mother’s suicide and that anger had driven her straight into Gerard’s manipulations.

Her whole reaction now confused Scott. He wasn’t doubting her abilities, but his own.

Yet, Allison drove the car around the corners at a rate of speed which would have guaranteed her being her pulled over by Sheriff Stilinski again until she parked the car in front of the clinic so hard that the brakes squealed. 

“Allison …”

She whirled on him. “I don’t follow naive idiots. I’m better than that.” She threw open the car door, got out, and then slammed it in his face. 

Stunned, Scott sat in the car. He could walk home from here, but Allison and Alan would no doubt be waiting him, and they would be disappointed he wasn’t man enough to come in and brave her anger. So would he. He slowly dragged himself inside.

Allison and Alan were waiting for him in the examination room, and the atmosphere was tense. Alan had the same look on his face that he had when explaining to a pet owner for the second that it was absolutely important not to allow your dog to each chocolate. On the other hand, at least Alan met his eyes. Allison didn’t seem like she was going to do that anytime soon.

“Thanks.” Scott began, paused, and then started again. “Thanks for meeting us.”

“My last appointment was concluded about fifteen minutes ago. All I have left to do is feed the animals and clean up.”

“I can help.”

“I’d appreciate it. How are classes going?”

Alan always asked him a version of that question every time he came home from school. Scott smiled.

“Chemistry is harder than it was under Harris, and I had trouble in that class. Otherwise, I’m doing okay.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” He glanced between the two of them. “So, what did you two need to speak to me about?”

Allison began her story without waiting for Scott to say anything, which he guessed was the right thing to do, given that she had actually been present. 

Mordo’s offer had been intriguing to Allison for many reasons. With the hunting families were trying to figure out where they belonged in this new world, the sorcerer had proposed that while agencies like the Avengers and SHIELD could reasonably be expected to deal with the dangers proposed by alien invasions and super-secret human terrorist organizations, the practiced secrecy of supernatural threats and the utter unpredictability of extra-dimensional incursions would be beyond them, or at least stretch their resources dangerously thin.

After all, the concept of needing an organization that transcended national borders in order to combat violent non-state actors with the ability to threaten the world was publicly less than five decades old. The hunting families had been around for centuries longer, and the Masters for millennia before them. Mundane agencies would be woefully ignorant of the complexities with which these two groups were familiar. Protection had always been more than simply defeating the enemy; truly protecting humanity required empathy and discretion. 

That would take time and focus that mundane organizations wouldn’t see the need for immediately. Everyone in that conference room understood that the supernatural and the extra-dimensional didn’t conform to the science with which the mundane would be comfortable. Maybe that was the fault of the sorcerers and the hunters for deciding to keep secrets, but pointing fingers now didn’t fix the problem. Humanity had evolved to the point where it would begin to play a bigger role in the affairs of the entire universe and the universes beyond that. Conflict was going to happen, and it was going to happen soon. 

As Allison had been taught and had tried to teach others: what they knew made them responsible.

Mordo had proposed that the Masters of the Mystic Arts and the Hunting Families form an alliance, where they were able to coordinate their efforts to protect all the peoples of the earth from the things that fell within their expertise. This included not only demons, the names of which made Scott wince as she pronounced them, but also by individuals who would seek to abuse the potential power of the supernatural.

“I can only think that it would have been very helpful if my mother could have called upon the resources of the Masters when we didn’t know anything about the kanima. If we had someone who could have helped us with Jennifer or …” She trailed off and looked guiltily at Scott.

“Or a nogitsune,” Scott finished for her. Allison and he locked eyes but then dropped their gazes simultaneously. 

Deaton put his palms together after she had finished, considering all she had told me. He remained silent for several minutes, obviously weight what he wanted to say. Finally, he sighed. “I think that I’m going to need you to tell me exactly what you want my opinion on.”

It was a very characteristic thing for him to say, and probably very irritating for Allison. 

“Everything, Alan,” she replied sharply. “The Masters of the Mystic Arts. Their philosophy. Their plan. My plan. I want to hear everything you think.”

“I don’t have a clear answer for you. I have reactions, and I don’t like passing my personal reactions off as effective advice.”

“I’m not looking for a clear answer. I’m simply asking for any input you can give.” 

“Very well. The first thing you have to know is that this is not my first contact with Kamar-Taj. To borrow a phrase from the world of sports, I was ‘scouted’ by them when I was younger.”

Scott felt his eyebrows rise. “They asked you to join them?”

“It never got that far, Scott. I was unaware of their interest. I learned later that one of them had investigated me, but they decided that I would be much better suited for the path of the druid.”

“Well, that’s kind of presumptuous,” Allison grinned at her joke.

“I prefer to think of it as a kindness. Both traditions seldom accept those who seek them out, rather choosing to recruit those who they believe would fit in. They don’t have time to waste on weekend wizards.”

“What do you mean?” Scott scrunched up his face.

“Neither the path of sorcery nor the path of Druid and Emissary are easy. Too many people see creeds based on philosophy or religion as something they can indulge in periodically, yet not be bound by when it becomes inconvenient. They see them as tools in or accessories for their life and not … transformations.”

Scott nodded in agreement. “So you’re happy they didn’t choose you?”

“I would have to say that I am. From what I have been able to piece together, and it hasn’t been very much since I didn’t even have a name for them until Allison told me, the Masters recuse themselves from everyday life, studying for years in their remote sanctums, and engaging with the outside world only when defending earth from threats from beyond this reality. It certainly wasn’t for someone like me.”

“I think you would have made a good sorcerer.”

Deaton walked over to the counter and put up an x-ray of an animal on the light board. “I am a veterinarian. It’s may not be as important as slaying a marauding dragon or defeating amorphous invaders from a hell dimension, but I see the value in taking care of people’s pets.” He tapped the x—ray. “This is from Noodles. He’s a mutt that the Breckinridge family took home from the pound. He’s a pretty average dog all around, but the three Breckinridge children love him without measure. Their mother told me that they fight over taking care of him. There’s something wrong with Noodles, but it’s something I can fix with a little medicine and some special care. Noodles will bring joy and happiness to that family for some time to come.” 

“But you’re not just a veterinarian,” Allison pointed out.

“I am an Emissary as well, but Emissaries are tied to a single pack. We know the people we’re supposed to help. Most of the Hale family may not have known who I was, but through Talia I knew all about Peter, and Derek, and Cora. I knew about the disaster of Corrinne’s pregnancy and the reason Talia acted as she did.” He sighed. “I cared about them, and I helped them. One of my only regrets is that I couldn’t protect them enough.”

Alan couldn’t know this, but his words were making Scott feel a little better. 

“Your family has a different calling, Allison, and that’s important, too. It’s even more rewarding for me to hear you questioning your own traditions. One of the things that attracted me to the path of the druid was their acknowledgment that all things change. What worked in the past may not work now. That’s a healthy attitude.”

Deaton thought about it for a few more minutes. “I would only caution you that when it comes to the Masters, you must remember that alliances go both ways. Yes, working with them will enable you to transform the hunting families into something closer to your vision, but it will also mean that you will have to share in their responsibilities. They have great power, but their enemies also possess great power.”

“So, in the end, it’s a gamble.”

Deaton smirked and shook his head. “I would rather say that it’s a tradeoff — greater power and renewed purpose in return for broader responsibilities. I do not regret not being asked to join the Masters because that would have, by necessity and not sinister intent, drew me away from the things I think are important. Whichever decision you make, I think you have to ask yourself in the end: what might you regret?”

###### November 10, 2014 – Miami, Florida

Leaning over the carafe, Peter Hale sniffed its contents and then frowned. Given the supposed quality of the hotel at which he was staying, he had expected a certain standard and the establishment had failed to deliver upon it. He was sure that the coffee was the same off-the-shelf brand you could buy at any corner convenience store, no matter how fancy the cup it was served in. The bagel had not been baked on site; he could have been picked it up, plastic wrapper and all, at any Trader Joe’s. The cream cheese was plain, and he suspected that the scrambled eggs had been made from a mix and not with fresh eggs. All in all, it was a pathetic waste of money.

Peter could tolerate many things in life — including, apparently, a teenage white knight for an alpha and living Argents — but he simply could not tolerate shoddy room service. He pondered his next step; it would depend on how vindictive he felt like being.

The world had denied him the things for which he shouldn’t have had to ask, and now he had paid good money for the promise of proper service, and they had failed to deliver. He had done everything in his power to take back what had been denied to him, and he wouldn’t stop now. 

He picked up the phone, but before he could call the front desk and find someone to humiliate for his inconvenience, there was a knock on the door. Excellent, if it was an employee of the hotel, perhaps some bones would be broken.

It turned out to be Deucalion, and while he’d love to break some of his bones, it would probably not be wise. More’s the pity.

“Good morning, Peter.”

The line was delivered with a truly disgusting amount of bonhomie, as if they were enjoying a vacation together. 

“If you’re expecting me to be polite, you should turn around and leave. Since I have to eat this tragedy passing for breakfast and then spend time with you, this morning cannot be, in any possible interpretation, _good._ ”

“I’m quite sure that I’ll manage to live with your disappointment.” Deucalion crossed to the cart and poured himself a cup of coffee without even asking. Peter silently wished he would choke on the cheap grounds. “Since it is entirely possible that we will be leaving here today, you should be ready.”

“I’ve spent the last three months tracking Gerard. I can be ready at a moment’s notice.”

Deucalion raised the cup in a salute and sat down on the room’s couch. The gesture was done with such insouciant privilege that it immediately sets Peter’s teeth on edge.

“Why are you here?”

“I may have told the person for which we are waiting your room number. I hope you don’t mind.”

Peter had no doubt that whomever they were waiting for would be someone dangerous, and so Deucalion had given him Peter’s room just in case this person decided to become violent. He’d be angrier at it, but he would have done the same thing.

“Charming, but that’s not what I meant. Why are you here?”

“I thought we had gone over this. You’re going to help me find Gerard.”

“That’s a what, not a why.”

“Does the why truly matter to you?” 

“I wouldn’t have asked if it didn’t.” Peter picked up one of the bagels and a knife. He used the knife smeared the cream cheese like he was issuing a formal challenge. “I like to know the motivations of the people with whom I’m working.”

“I can imagine. You see your ignorance of my motive as a vulnerability I could exploit, in much the same way you conceal your true motives from Derek and Scott so you can exploit their vulnerability.”

“Oh?” Peter took a bite and chewed with precise deliberation. “You think you know my motives?”

“I know you’re a monster”

“So says the Demon Wolf.”

“I never said I wasn’t a monster too, Peter. After all, we share certain similarities that I recognize.”

“Oh, do we?”

“It’s obvious. We both decided to take injuries done to our person and make the world at large pay for them.” 

“I feel honored to be included in the same category as someone with your body count.”

Deucalion’s lip wrinkled in distaste. Peter enjoyed the effect of his jib on the man’s unflappable British calm until he responded with a tilt of his head. “It isn’t much of a sacrifice, given how small your ambitions were, to fold your crimes into mine.”

To any human observer, it would seems as if the two men were merely staring at each other. Peter stood with his arms akimbo, body loosed but eyes fixed on the other man. Deucalion sipped inferior coffee out of hotel china as if nothing was happening. To any gifted with lycanthropic senses, the two men were poised on the edge of violence. 

Deucalion raised his eyebrows over the rim of his cup, daring his opponent to make the first move.

Peter turned away. It infuriated him, but the calculus was clear. Even with his membership in a large and powerful Hale Pack, as a beta he couldn’t match the power of the Demon Wolf, not with all the sparks which Deucalion had absorbed from other werewolves. 

Instead, he returned to his original topic. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

“I haven’t, have I?”

“Come now, you’re smart enough to realize that it would be easier to have my cooperation rather than spend the effort to drag my unwilling ass all over the known world. I’m not helpless, even if I might be weak after my resurrection—”

“Spare me the fairy story, Peter. I’m well aware that you have reclaimed your potency and then some, and I know how you did it.”

Peter’s eyes glowed with beta blue as he figured it out. “Of course, you followed her”

“Given Miss Baccari’s ability to survive the original attack by Kali, who was one of the deadliest fighters I had ever met, I returned after Derek and Scott left the distillery to make sure she was well and truly dead. I tracked her as you must have tracked her directly to the Nemeton. While you have no doubt hidden her body well, you didn’t have the means to erase all the evidence.”

“Kudos.” Peter sneered. “Yes, sacrificing her there renewed my vigor. You knowing that tells me why you’re willing to employ me, but it doesn’t tell me why you would want my help to find Gerard and force him to tell you about the Dread Doctors. You know I must be looking to regain what I once lost; my nephew might believe I’ve given up dreams of being an alpha, but you wouldn’t believe that.”

“Not in the slightest.” The alpha of alphas put down his coffee cup. “You aren’t going to let this go, are you?”

Peter shook his head slowly.

“Do you understand what I mean when I tell you that by every account I’ve read, the Beast of Gévaudan was an immanent werewolf.”

“A few years ago, I would probably have mocked you for believing in such things, but recently I’ve encountered a kanima, a True Alpha, and a nogitsune. I’m open to anything at this point. On the other hand, I have to ask, with all the sarcasm I can possibly muster … _so?_ ”

“I was contacted anonymously and received compelling information. It leads me to believe that the Doctors, working under the guidance and protection of Hydra, are attempting to resurrect the Beast.”

Peter blinked at the possibility. He had no illusions of Deucalion being gullible, so he didn’t doubt the source. “Why on earth would they do that?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I have several very unpleasant suspicions. Why do you think that Hydra might want access to La Bête du Gévaudan?”

“Oh.” Peter stood up straighter. “An immanent werewolf is spontaneously created when an appropriate human is exposed to a supernatural force, such as drinking water from a werewolf’s print. The individual, by nature or nurture, is predisposed to no longer remain human and the slightest exposure triggers the change. If Hydra — or any unscrupulous organization — understood how the processed worked, they could circumvent the necessity for either breeding or the Bite.”

“Exactly. There wouldn’t be any need for alphas at all. Before my defeat in Beacon Hills, I desired to reform werewolf culture to break the stranglehold of pack structure. I gave it up.”

“Because of Scott.”

“Yes. But I still possess an ego. If I don’t get to change the nature of our people, I will be damned if I’ll let some human organization do it.” Deucalion watched Peter’s response careful. “I need Gerard because no one knows more about the Beast and his connection to the Doctors. I choose you because you have had experienced fighting the Doctors.” 

“And because I’m expendable.” 

“Was there any doubt?”

Peter clucked his tongue. “Why not call McCall to your aid. He’d help you if you asked him.”

“Yes.” Deucalion nodded. “He would, even though I was his enemy. Something you may scorn, but only because you lack understanding. However, I would spare him what else I have discovered.” 

“Stiles is involved.” 

Deucalion’s phone beep as he received a text. “Our third is downstairs. Try not to antagonize Braeden too much?”

As he had promised, Peter was ready within five minutes. He walked beside Deucalion as they descended to the lobby and checked out of the hotel. He did take the time to speak to the manager about the abysmal quality of the breakfast, as Deucalion waited a little impatiently beside him. As the managed offered him inadequate compensation, Peter’s eyes wandered up to the security cameras. He smiled at them, mockingly. 

Deucalion wanted his help, and while the Demon Wolf would no doubt force him if he demurred, he was still a good judge of character. Peter Hale was considered dangerous, and that meant he had power. Hopefully, he could get a little more.

###### November 11, 2014 – Samana Cay, Bahamas

Theo watched the hacked security feed. Peter Hale, looking smug and satisfied, smirked at the hotel’s camera. He closed that window as Stiles entered the room. Dr. Ranefer shifted her attention up from her own tablet.

“You two wanted to see me?” Stiles stood inside the doorway. “Privately?”

“Close the door,” Dr. Ranefer answered.

Theo watched Stiles’s face wince in irritation. It could have been either side of his personality. Neither of them liked to be given orders. Dr. Ranefer didn’t mean anything by it, of course, which is why Stiles didn’t bother to react.

“Both of you look distinctly unhappy.” Stiles pulled up a chair after securing the room. “And I have a feeling that I’m going to be unhappy, if you’re so unhappy.”

Theo nodded, but he didn’t say anything. He knew what Dr. Ranefer was about to say, but he had to pretend like he didn’t.

“We’ve lost contact with Puente Antiguo.”

Theo kept his face calm. 

“When you say lost contact, what do you mean exactly? That could mean a great many things.”

“We have had no reports from the Doctors or from the support staff. We’re still getting telemetry from the computer system there, but that only tells me that it hasn’t been destroyed. All communication attempts, even standard check-ins, have gone unanswered for the last fifty-seven hours.”

Stiles randomly tapped his fingers on the table. Theo recognized the significance of the gesture by now. The void kitsune was tamping down his initial reaction to think about the angles. Stiles was getting better at commanding himself. He would need to do so. 

“Do we think that something happened?”

Dr. Ranefer shook her head sharply once. “We don’t have enough information. If they achieved success with whatever it was they were doing, it could possibly cause a disruption in communications, but since I don’t know what their experiment was, it’s speculation.”

Theo was ready for what came next.

“What do you think?” Stiles turned his eyes on him.

“I think that the Doctors never saw fit to tell me what they were doing.” It was a lie of omission. They had trained him to be an infiltrator too well for him not to put things together. “But I knew they were trying to create something powerful. Perhaps something went wrong? Or perhaps …”

Stiles gestured impatiently at Theo. 

“Perhaps, now that they have what they wanted, they’re next step no longer needs to include us.”

“They’ll be disappointed if they try to sever our relationship without so much as an explanation. Could it be SHIELD? The Avengers? Another enemy?”

“I have no evidence, but the Avengers are on their way back stateside after taking The Finger.” Theo reported. “There’s another alternative.”

“Von Strucker.” Dr. Ranefer confirmed.

“You think he might have figured out my plan to separate the DOA from Hydra?” 

“He’s not stupid,” Theo suggested. 

“Okay.” Stiles kept tapping and then stopped. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You have a treatment coming up, Ayla?”

“Yes.” She nodded. The Geneticist had made good progress with her infestation problem. “In fact—”

“It’s tomorrow. Send them a message that you’re coming in early and get the quinjet ready.”

“You want me to lead the investigative team?”

“Oh, no.” Stiles shook his head. “I’m leading it.”

“No.” Theo said way too loudly and way too quickly. Both Dr. Ranefer and Stiles turned to look at him. “It’s just … it’s too dangerous.” 

“You’re not coming, Theo. I know how much you fear the Doctors. But I don’t. I will want you monitoring everything while we’re gone.”

Theo nodded, swallowing. “Okay.” Hopefully, they’d get there and back before Deucalion and Peter Hale reached New Mexico. He didn’t want all the information he had fed the Demon Wolf to go to waste.


	4. Chapter 4

###### November 11, 2014. Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Lydia wasn’t sure why she had agreed to study with other people tonight. She certainly wasn’t in a good mood, and the enormous amount of not-studying going on wasn’t helping that mood at all. The half-dozen students had been gathered for over an hour, and she didn’t think that, aside from her, any of them had actually gotten any studying done. The others had arranged themselves throughout the dormitory’s lounge, and most were talking animatedly with each other. They had gotten drinks, some of them surreptitiously alcoholic. They had gotten snacks of many different varieties. There was even a television going on in the background, blaring a documentary about the Avengers.

In other words, everything but their stated purpose was happening.

Lydia had been trying to block the background noise out, to no avail. Every time one of them laughed or every time one of the talking heads on the television raised their voice to make a point, it felt like a personal attempt to distract her. Maybe it was her own inexperience with the need to study so hard that made her cross. She was easily the youngest person in the room but she was equal to them when it came to the sophistication of her course work and the size of her class load. Her first semester, quite simply, had been harder than she had expected.

She hadn’t overestimated her talent; she was still more than capable of being at MIT and doing well. But the extracurricular activities which had plagued the last two-and-a-half years of her life in Beacon Hills had not come without a price. She found herself more anxious than she once was; every shadow could contain something unknown to the rest of the world. She found herself more aware than the people around her; every sound could be a clue or a warning. She found herself more easily distracted; her life no longer remained completely within her control.

Distancing herself from the stress of those nights had been one of the reasons she agreed to this study group at all.

Her mother had made her promise she would attempt to develop a social life. Natalie had insisted that when Lydia went to college and away from Beacon Hills that she should strive for the full experience everyone else had, though Lydia had balked at rushing a sorority. At the time, Lydia had been shocked at the urgency in her mother’s argument. At first, she thought it had been her mother meddling as she frequently tried to do, but upon reflection, there had been something in the way that her mother had spoken to her that made her suspicious.

The idea that her mother had an inkling about the supernatural disturbed her on many levels, but she couldn’t dismiss it as a possibility. The history of her grandmother and her death in Eichen House made it very possible that she might. Lydia intended to confront her over the Winter Recess, but she wouldn’t do it alone. She’d have Scott alongside her at least.

“So, what do you think, Lydia?”

“I’m sorry?” She smiled her best disarming smile. “I drifted off into topology.”

Gerald leaned forward into her personal space; at least he was blocking the television with his enormous head. A junior specializing in discrete mathematics, Lydia had met him on her second day at school. He had seemed interesting enough those first few weeks, but, as the days had passed, his flaws had become more obvious to her. He reminded Lydia as nothing less than her sophomore self: confident and outgoing, but every social interaction was treated like a skirmish in an ongoing conflict.

“We were talking about the need to hold billionaires responsible for their participation in the military-industrial complex.”

“Oh.” Lydia turned her head to the side and tried her best to keep the disinterest off her face. “That’s interesting.”

The boy returned her smile, but he subtly looked around him for support. He was trying to get confirmation that she was sincere from his friends. “You sound like you don’t agree?”

“I think that the military-industrial complex is everything that President Eisenhower warned us against, and I think it needs to be dismantled, because it frequently leads the United States into neo-imperialism and a borderline-criminal misappropriation of resources. I also think that holding individuals responsible for a system that has evolved over four generations is not very productive, and it completely neglects the advantages having a powerful military gives us. That same complex that promoted the CIA’s bombing of Laos also helped create Iron Man.”

“Tony Stark,” Gerald said with a slight sneer, “is a war criminal. He made his billions through weapon sales and his come-to-Jesus moments don’t make up for that.”

Lydia nodded sagely. “I think your judgment reeks of oversimplification. What you just said might get a lot of likes on Tumblr, but it’s not a very effective analysis of the history of Tony Stark and Stark Industries.”

Gerald’s face turned brittle. Lydia raised an eyebrow in response, but inwardly she sighed. If she hadn’t promised herself that she wouldn’t hide her intelligence any longer, she might have simply agreed with him and went back to studying. But that Lydia had been vanquished by necessity.

“I’m afraid I’m going to ask you to explain that.”

The rest of the room had turned to look at them both. Gerald’s tone had been sharp and angry.

“When did you want Stark Industries to stop making weapons?”

“I don’t want them to ever have started!”

“In 1939, with Hitler marching over Europe? In 1942, when the HYDRA-Abteilung secured an extra-dimensional power source and began their plan to conquer the world? In 1956 when Nikita Khrushchev promised to bury us and solidified the Iron Curtain? In 1971, when full-scale operations in Vietnam hit their peak? When the Chitauri wormhole opened? All of those incidents could have been solved by diplomacy, but they weren’t. It’s absolutely necessary to talk about alternatives after the conflict is over, to analyze situations in order to prevent them from every happening again, but you can do that without pretending it was never necessary to fight, and war requires weapons.”

“But none of it requires profit.”

“I fully understand you would prefer to live in a socialist society and so would I,” Lydia soothed insincerely, “but we _don’t._ In the system we have, companies need to make a profit in order to fund research and development. Do you know, off the top of your head, the number of American casualties in the Vietnam Conflict?”

“45,000.”

“According to some estimates, without the advantage of Stark weapons technology, that number could have been increased by a third. What do you think the casualty count would have been in Manhattan if we didn’t have Iron Man weapon system on our side? By all means, let’s talk about the exploitation of government contracts and the lives of the poor who see the military as their only way to advance. Let’s talk about illegal lobbying and pork-barrel projects unlikely to produce any result but very rich white men. But those are discrete problems that can be addressed without calling every single person who owns stock in a weapons company a war profiteer.”

Gerald had withered under her assault. It was predictable, since he had been arguing to look cool in the first place. If he remained predictable, as Lydia expected, he would go on the attack, probably _ad hominem. ___

__“I didn’t take you for an Avenger fangirl.”_ _

__“I’m not a fangirl of anyone, thank you very much, but I’ve grown out of trying to solve complex problems by pretending that they aren’t complex.”_ _

__Stacia was an engineering student, and brilliant her own right when she wasn’t busy sabotaging herself because her parents pushed her too hard. “The Avengers themselves are a problem. What do they think they’re doing?”_ _

__“Fighting Hydra.” Paranayan put down his drink in response._ _

__“Without the authority to do so.”_ _

__Paranayan flipped Gerald off. “You’re absolutely right. We should use an international agency well-equipped to fight stateless Nazi super-scientists. I know, something like SHIELD.”_ _

__Gerald scoffed. “Because privately funded vigilante super soldiers are so much better.”_ _

__“Probably not,” Lydia agreed. “But right now, it’s the best we have. According to everything I’ve ever read, Hydra came within three hours of taking over the world. You see, sometimes when hostile forces are on have, you have to make use of what you have, and what we have right now are the Avengers. Trust me, nothing is worse than being the target of monsters while having no ability to defend yourself.”_ _

__Everyone in the room looked at her. In her passionate reply, she may have revealed something she didn’t want to. She had to deflect, so she gestured at the screen where Iron Man was killing a Chitauri leviathan. “If you dislike the Avengers so much, why do you have that documentary running in the background?”_ _

__“Lydia?” Stacia looked at her oddly. “The television’s not on.”_ _

__Lydia’s head snapped once more in that direction but she could see them all on the screen, clear as day. She opened her mouth and screamed._ _

###### November 12, 2014. Puente Antiguo, New Mexico

__“I wish we had one of the newer quinjets,” Stiles murmured to Ayla as they crossed over the New Mexican desert. Anxious to get to Puente Antiguo and maybe a little bored, he entertained himself with daydreaming about what he could do with one of them._ _

__“This one is more than adequate for our current needs.” Dr. Ranefer pointed out from where she was bent over her tablet. “It’s equipped with the latest in ECM, it is fully armed with the latest weapon systems, and it is protected by a virus which I introduced into air-traffic controls systems and government radar installations. The virus creates both a false registration and a temporary authorization.”_ _

__“But it can’t go invisible.”_ _

__Dr. Ranefer looked up at his words, which he had to admit had sounded petulant. She studied him for a moment. “You’re upset that it doesn’t have the latest camouflage technology.”_ _

__“I’m not upset …”_ _

__She stared at him blankly, while pushing her glasses up with her thumb. Ayla didn’t actually need them to see, but she grew motion sick if she tried to read in a moving vehicle, and the glasses compensated for that. She couldn’t stand not being able to work on long trips._ _

__“I’m not. Really.” Stiles grimaced in regret at both not having one and about sounding the way he did. “But they’re fucking cool.”_ _

__“Every time I forget that a component of your psyche is the mind of a teenage boy, you find a way to remind me.” She teased dryly. “As a solution perhaps you could put your mind to stealing the appropriate technology?”_ _

__“That’s … that’s a pretty good idea, actually.”_ _

__She smiled and turned back to her tablet. “I get them from time to time.”_ _

__Stiles settled down in his seat to figure out a way to do exactly that. He had been informed as a department head that the fledging reincarnation of SHIELD, led by a resurrected Phil Coulson, had managed to adapt the helicarrier’s cloaking technology to work with smaller vehicles. What he had to do was figure out a way to get that technology from Coulson’s organization without alerting them to his involvement and the DOA’s continuing operations._ _

__During last year’s adventure in Beacon Hills, he had come very close to encountering Coulson’s team. He had managed to avoid being seen, but he had witnessed them and Scott’s pack tangling with the Dread Doctors. While he had scooped up the mad scientists due to their interference, he wouldn’t put it past someone like Coulson to suspect his hand behind events. He wouldn’t go after the technology until he was absolutely sure he could get it without even leaving a hint as to his identity._ _

__He didn’t want Scott drawn back into this mess. Ordering the end of surveillance of Beacon Hills had been one of the hardest things he had ever done, but Stiles couldn’t move forward effectively if he kept looking back._ _

__“Sir.” The pilot’s voice came over the intercom. “We’re approaching the Operating Theater. Still no contact.”_ _

__Stiles weighed his options. It was better to be safe than sorry. “Do a fly over at maximum altitude.”_ _

__After getting an affirmative response from the pilot, Stiles brought up the feed from the cameras mounted on the bottom of the plane. Ayla saved her work and turned off her tablet and shifted her chair. They had grown used to this; while he wasn’t technologically ignorant, she was more widely read and had a finer eye for detail._ _

__“No obvious damage,” was her only conclusion concluded, after they completed the first fly over._ _

__Stiles frowned as he ordered another one. “Can you interface with the base’s security system?”_ _

__She turned to the on-board computer, while Stiles addressed the four-man squad with them, making sure both pilots heard his orders over the intercom. “We’re going to treat this as hostile territory. Lock and load, but remember — no one fires until I give the order. Three minutes until touchdown.”_ _

__As they scrambled to get ready, Stiles went over to the weapons rack, immediately selecting a phased-plasma pistol as well as a collapsible jō. The pistol was an expensive ace-in-the-hole. Only a few of the weapons using the tesseract’s energy remained in service, as Hydra was no longer able to recharge them._ _

__“Their security system is offline and the uplink is disabled,” Ayla reported precisely. “It will take time to change that. I can’t imagine what’s going on down there.”_ _

__“I can imagine plenty.” Stiles wondered what the Doctors had let loose. “You four will disembark with me, and then this plane will lift off immediately after touch down. Dr. Ranefer, I want you to start data cleaning protocols remotely.”_ _

__“I should be down there with you!”_ _

__Stiles shook his head. “The two most likely explanations for the situation are as follows. Something got the Doctors, and considering how powerful they are, I don’t want to imagine what it could be. Or, the Doctors have decided to terminate their employment, which implies they won’t be friendly to us. Either way, you’re not a trained combatant, and I need you to make sure that our data is secure.”_ _

__Ayla stood up in the moving plane and moved so she was standing right in front of him to make her point. “I could do that more efficiently on the ground. There’s nothing we’ve learned in the last few minutes that leads me to believe that I’m going to have any more luck accessing the servers from up here than I had from Samana Cay.”_ _

__Stiles thought that one of the merits of melding with a thousand-year-old Japanese fox was that people would do what he said once in a while. Apparently not. He locked eyes with her, but he didn’t have an effective counter to her argument._ _

__“Mattaku! You!” He pointed at one of men. “You are to not let Dr. Ranefer out of your sight. Anything shows up that you can’t shoot dead, your primary objective becomes getting her on this plane and in the air.”_ _

__“Yes, sir.”_ _

__“That’s the best you’re going to get from me, Dr. Ranefer.” He turned his attention to the pilot. “Put us down outside the perimeter fence.”_ _

__Luckily, Odin Borson decided to drop kick Mjolnir onto a relatively flat part of the New Mexican desert. The six of them had no trouble leaving the plane, the four security personnel spreading out around the two VIPS and into a cordon. The day was overcast and gloomy._ _

__“Strange,” Ayla paused, tilting her head._ _

__“Don’t be stingy with the words right now doctor.”_ _

__“No birds. No insects. They were always present when I came here.”_ _

__Stiles didn’t shudder involuntarily. He didn’t! After all, he was a thing that made people shudder now, and it would be embarrassing to react like that. He reached out with his own senses only to feel vast potential for chaos, a trembling knot in the void, coming from the base._ _

__“Look sharp, everyone.”_ _

__The perimeter fence still hummed with electricity; they had upgraded it to keep nosy locals away. But it didn’t offer much of a defense against him, as he began to cut it open with a pair of cutters his men gave him. Immunity to electricity had its advantages. He had already decided against going through the front gate. If the base had been taken from the Doctors, their opposition would be moronic not to keep an eye on it. If the Doctors had gone rogue, they would definitely keep an eye on it._ _

__Making his way through the hole in the fence, he took a moment to crane his neck at the cars in the parking lot. “It’s a full house today.” He didn’t feel the need mention to anyone who looked at the cars closely could tell that they hadn’t moved for days._ _

__The squad approached a side entrance. This one had been installed on Stiles’s order because it would be the most concealed exit from the base. Hostiles would have to position someone deliberately there in order to restrict its use. Stiles had been quite serious in his insistence about escape routes, but he had also placed an override in the secure door so he could get in when he needed to._ _

__The Dread Doctors had been extraordinary useful. They had not only expanded the Department of Occult Armament’s knowledge base, not only shared with them several key principles of arcane technology that the division hadn’t even been close to developing on their own, not only helped Ayla handle her infestation problem, but they had shared their protocols for the capture and restraint of supernatural entities. Ayla was becoming swamped with the backlog. They had been an incredible asset, but Stiles never, ever trusted them._ _

__That wasn’t exactly true. Stiles did trust the Doctors: to do what they wanted when they wanted no matter whom it hurt._ _

__When the door opened up at his command, the squad lowered their guns. The Geneticist was waiting for them. She barely moved let alone indicated she would attack._ _

__“Hey there, Good Lookin’,” Stiles greeted her with his best sarcasm. “Something the matter? You guys don’t write. You don’t call.”_ _

__“Follow.” Without anything else, she turned and headed back into the complex._ _

__“I swear, they’re so chatty.”_ _

__Stiles narrowed his eyes and then pointed two fingers at Ayla and her bodyguard and then down another hallway. The scientist nodded. That duo would go to the server room while Stiles and the other three grunts would head directly into whatever the Doctors had waiting for them._ _

###### November 12, 2014. Santa Fe, New Mexico.

__“Good shot!” Tony clapped the junior senator from New Mexico on the shoulder. Steve, for his part, looked away so the politician wouldn’t see him grimacing. It wasn’t that the senator hadn’t made a good shot, it was in Tony’s attitude. It was almost as if Tony became a different person when he schmoozing. He wouldn’t call it grossly fake, but Steve had spent so much time with Tony during the last ten months that change was unsettling._ _

__Instead, Steve looked up into the sky. It wasn’t the best day for golf; the sky was heavy and overcast but both Tony and the local weatherman had assured him that it wasn’t going to a rain._ _

__Smiling at the praise, the senator handed his club to his caddy and headed toward the green. He wasn’t a terrific golfer, but he was also the chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Transnational Crime, which meant that the Avengers needed his support._ _

__Tony went over to his bag and put his own club away. Because he was an incredible showoff, Tony had brought a robot golf bag that followed him around by itself on the links. “Steve, is there something the matter?”_ _

__“I am not moping,” Steve defended himself preemptively, lifting up one foot and shaking the tassels of his golf shoes. “I feel ridiculous today.”_ _

__“You usually wear a red, white, and blue costume, one version of which had wings on your head, and golf clothes make you feel ridiculous?” Tony smirked while fluttering his hands near his temples. “Well, I can see that a side effect of Erskine’s process was a removal of all fashion sense.”_ _

__“It’s not the clothing. It’s … look, I’m fully aware of the necessity of public relations. I spent four months with the USO.”_ _

__“This is just …” Tony made parallel chopping motions with his hands to empathize his words. “Narrowly focused public relations.”_ _

__Steve shrugged. “I know. If I didn’t think this was worth doing, I wouldn’t be here.”_ _

__“I know. I don’t enjoy it either, Steve, but it has to be done.”_ _

__“You seem to enjoy it enough.”_ _

__“You think? I don’t like touching people, let alone asking people for things. I don’t like compromising.” Tony smiled openly. “After all, I grew up among the very rich, so stupidly rich that I’m not used to not getting exactly what I want, when I want it. Why do you think I handed most of the reins over to Obadiah Stane so I could tinker in a lab and terrorize the nightclubs of the world? Because I hated what it took for me to negotiate with people just like him.” He waved at the senator._ _

__Steve nodded, but he couldn’t really empathize. He hadn’t been as bad off as other people he had known, but his entire childhood had been about cutting corners and accepting that some things were simply going to be beyond his and his mother’s reach._ _

__“Having money, having power, isn’t enough if you want to accomplish real things, the things that last. To do that, you have to get other people on your side. If that means learning how to speak effectively so you can convince people, learning how to tolerate shaking hands and kissing babies in order to be able to schmooze, learning how to threaten creatively in order to get recalcitrant jackasses to move a single inch, then that’s what you have to do. That’s what I’ve done. I didn’t just want to stop selling weapons; I want to create a world where no one can get rich selling weapons. If I want that, money and technology isn’t enough; I need social skills. The only other way to do it would be to Red Skull it up all over the place.”_ _

__“Please don’t.”_ _

__Tony winked. “Just for you, Steve. Just for you.”_ _

__They completed the first nine holes, and Steve made a good-faith attempt to enjoy himself. He turned out to be okay at it, even though he had never played the game before. After all sport had been for rich people before he underwent Project Rebirth, and after, there had always been an important fight that needed fought._ _

__They were discussing whether to stop for lunch or to head straight on to the back nine when they were interrupted by … Tony’s golf bag._ _

__“Sir, JARVIS interrupted. “We have a situation.”_ _

__“Excuse me, Senator,” Tony turned away immediately while Steve joined him. The man and his entourage moved away to give them privacy._ _

__“What is it, JARVIS?” Steve asked, trying to conceal his relief at the possible end of this day’s activity._ _

__“The surveillance drones Mr. Stark placed in a cordon around Puente Antiguo have detected the approach of a quinjet.”_ _

__Steve shot Tony a questioning glance._ _

__“I noticed your frustration in Estonia, so I took some extra steps to get the jump on them, while we were waiting for permission from the local authorities. JARVIS, do we have its transponder signal?”_ _

__“That’s why I signaled the alert, sir. When I checked its registration, I detected an attempt by an advanced computer virus to provide false information on the inquiry.”_ _

__“Interesting.”_ _

__“The virus is sophisticated enough to deceive most government systems, but not mine.”_ _

__Steve turned to Tony. “We need to move quickly.”_ _

__“Agreed. JARVIS, can you get the others in the air?”_ _

__“I’ve taken the liberty of informing the others at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. They are already airborne, and Ms. Romanov is attempting to inform the appropriate authorities. Their ETA here is five minutes.”_ _

__“Thank you, JARVIS.”_ _

__Tony left to give their regrets to the senator, while Steve rushed to return his rented clubs. He could have left them on the grounds, but it was the principle of the thing. By time he got back, Clint had their transport hovering over the ninth fairway. They scrambled aboard, Steve giving Tony a hand up._ _

__“What’s our status?”_ _

__Clint punched it. “Now that we’ve got a cleared flight plan, I can punch it up. We’ll be there in six minutes.”_ _

__Natasha rolled her eyes. “I have grudging permission for the operation from the governor. No word from Washington. No support units closer than an hour away.”_ _

__“So we’re on our own.” Steve nodded. “Anyone with an objection to doing this with just us?”_ _

__“No!” Thor stated in his usual manner. “We have more than enough power here to take this stronghold. Stark’s eyes have seen few enemies entering.”_ _

__“Let’s … let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Bruce Banner raised both hands to placate them even as Clint hit the engines. “There’s something weird going on there. While we’ve spotted that new jet, the surveillance drones haven’t clocked anyone entering or leaving the base for three days. Twenty vehicles in the lot, and no one’s gone home, or gone to the store, or even stretched their legs.”_ _

__“Dr. Banner is correct.” JARVIS displayed several points of view. A team was disembarking from a quinjet. “Unless there is another exit to base that does not show up on old SHIELD schematics, no one has left or entered since surveillance began.”_ _

__Steve moved to the tactical displays, thinking. While the Avengers were pretty powerful, they weren’t invincible. Moving in without sufficient support could be dangerous. On the other hand, the very strangeness of the report made him think it could be worthwhile._ _

__“Show me the base. Do we have any lock on the people from the quinjet? Anything on facial recognition?”_ _

__JARVIS and Bruce brought up the schematic of the base and the live video feed. The base itself wasn’t large. Maybe eight personnel total could operate comfortably in it._ _

__“They’ve expanded,” Thor pointed at the holographic representation of the base. “That is new. Is it not, Clint?”_ _

__Clint hit the autopilot and turned around to double check. “Yeah. They’ve added a little extra space, but not as much as I expected.”_ _

__With Thor and Hawkeye having spent time at the base, it made Steve a little more comfortable with ordering an assault._ _

__“The goons with guns are probably one of the renegade STRIKE squads,” Banner flapped his hands, putting the images up. “We don’t have a match yet on the woman, but … yeah. Yeah. We have a positive match. It’s Stiles Stilinski.” With a gesture he blew up the image._ _

__“He looks like he should be pledging a frat,” Natasha shook her head._ _

__Captain America straightened his spine with the realization that Fox was present. He hadn’t been lying when he believed that they had to stop Hydra from creating its own answer to the Avengers. Today’s prize had just gotten bigger. “Evaluations?”_ _

__“From what I have read in Ms. Hill’s excellent chronicles, he is host for a nogitsune.” Thor’s jaw set into a firm line. “They are very dangerous.”_ _

__“I sort of skipped that briefing paper,” Tony offered with embarrassment. “What can we expect?”_ _

__“Like all kitsune hailing from their otherworldly forest, they are not anything human, though they all require a host to operate on your world. For most kitsune, it is symbiotic, but the nogitsune take their host forcibly. Few Asgardians ever journey to their land, for to do so would most often result in becoming their plaything, yet we have all heard the stories. Kitsune are faster and stronger than humans, and they can teach themselves to heal more quickly. They can generate and control lightning with their tails. It is called foxfire. A kitsune’s primary danger, however, is in its array of tricks. A nogitsune’s tricks are often dangerous and malicious, for it feeds upon the unpleasantness left by each disaster it causes and grows stronger as it does so. The only possible advantage is that it prefers to keep its prey alive in order to generate as much sustenance as it can.”_ _

__“The Yellow Claw. It was a trick and I fell for it like an idiot.” Tony snorted in self-directed derision. “JARVIS, make sure the new EMP bafflers on the suit are operational.”_ _

__“Yes, sir.”_ _

__“Is there a way to separate it from its host?” Cap asked. If there was a kid trapped in that body, he wanted to see if he could be saved. He’d want someone to at least try._ _

__“No technology on Earth can do it. Perhaps we have the means on Asgard, but according to what Ms. Hill has learned, Von Strucker used the Scepter to permanently bind the nogitsune to its host. Fox has become something new. How this ultimately changes the creature and its abilities, I cannot tell you, Captain.”_ _

__“What is he doing here?” Banner asked, studying the screen. “Once you reclaimed Mjolnir, Thor, what could possibly be the importance of this site? It was just a basic research station. Wasn’t it?”_ _

__“A station that was scheduled to be dismantled,” Natasha hummed. “In the aftermath of Hydra’s exposure, it would be a low-importance facility. A good place for hiding something you don’t want anyone to find.”_ _

__“Well, we’re going to find out what’s there.” Cap decided. “Anyone have any critical objections to handling this right now?”_ _

__Steve locked eyes with Tony over the tactical table, who nodded agreement._ _

__“There’s no time like the present,” Natasha said and started suiting up. Clint grunted his affirmation and went back to the pilot’s chair._ _

__“Aye.” Thor nodded, lightly banging his fist on the table in his eagerness. “Let’s see what sort of hunt this Fox brings us.”_ _   


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> United States casualties from the Vietnam conflict were 58,000 dead.


End file.
